


Time to Heal

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad coping mechanisms, Lots of Angst, Multi, but sometimes that's not a good thing, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24035767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: The knock on effects of Grizzop not making it to Rome aren't all good.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan/Azu, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde/Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam
Comments: 17
Kudos: 88





	Time to Heal

_What if..._

* * *

“I can’t do it, Grizzop.”

“Why _not?”_

Wilde is so tired. It’s not just the curses, the nightmares, it’s the knowledge that he’s utterly alone now. Apophis hadn’t even stopped to give him any updates after glassing the factory, had simply told him “this is the last you’ll be able to ask of me for a long time”. The only person in this world now, that Oscar trusts, is the goblin standing in front of him.

Who is absolutely desperate to leave.

“Do you want to travel overland? I can give you money for…”

“It’s too _slow._ I need to be there _now.”_

“I can’t do it! I don’t have the power, or the connections, or any means to get you there. I’m sorry you’re the ones who had access to the most powerful conjuration mage in Europe but he’s _gone_ now and so have _all of them.”_

Oscar is too tired, and the droop of Grizzop’s ears tells him, he’s gone too far. He used to be better at this. He was better at this before Grizzop stripped him bare.

“I’m sorry,” Oscar says. “They’re on their own.”

* * *

_That means..._

* * *

They have to go to London.

It’s hellish, every step away from Rome a reminder of their failure, Einstein almost comatose from the effort he put into trying to unravel the dimensional spell. Azu had shouted at him. Azu had told him to stop asking for the impossible, even as she wept at the fate of Emeka and Ed. But all Hamid could think of was Ishak - that one glimpse he had of his brother, sitting bound and helpless and completely, utterly out of their reach.

“Eldarion is the only one who can help,” Einstein had finally admitted. 

“Teleport us to her.”

Even Einstein has run out of extra words now. “I can’t,” he says simply. “I don’t know where she is.”

“I can find her,” Sasha says, and Hamid looks up into dark eyes and a troubled face and he almost… _almost_ wants to tell her not to try.

“Good,” he says. “Tell us what we need to do.”

* * *

_And then..._

* * *

“It’s been two years,” Einstein says, and Hamid looks over at Sasha, at Azu, and then back to Einstein. They’ve gotten everyone back. Eldarion is leaning, spent and exhausted, against a wall. Vesseek is quivering with anxiety.

“Is Grizzop alive?”

Einstein looks more grim than Hamid has ever seen. “We think so. But it’s been two weeks since we’ve heard anything out of Japan at all.”

* * *

_Because..._

* * *

They fight their way through the tunnel. The ambush is just a pile of mooks, lads and blokes, Cel recognises half of them and takes a large amount of grim delight in vomiting spiders in their midst. This sets back Zolf only a moment or two, and grimly delights Grizzop, who picks off screaming, scattering lads with his firey arrows. Wilde has to do virtually nothing, save distract those who get too close to Barnes as he swings his sword. Carter flits in and out of vision, wielding his daggers with brutal efficiency.

He begins to think they delayed too long, they should have come earlier, Shoin is an idiot who employs idiots and if the six of them can take them down this easily then he’s been needlessly careful and _how many have suffered because of his delays?_

Then they reach the kobold cavern. And Grizzop goes still, and quiet.

They free all of the kobolds. It takes hours, and Wilde is the one who is agitated and angry now, they don’t have time for this, they need to get to Shoin and finish it, they can come back, they can fix it _after_ but Grizzop just snarls at him. “No. We do this _now._ They don’t spend _one second longer down here.”_

Zolf and Cel agree. So Wilde gets to work, opening locks. The kobolds mill about, scared and drugged. Cel tries to speak to them but they can’t understand, some of them move as though to go about duties that will, very soon, have no meaning.

When they’re all free, and Wilde’s hands are cut and bleeding from working at the locks on the cages, he hears a cry from the other side of the cavern, looks up to see Grizzop standing, bow drawn and lit with holy fire, a vision of angry determination.  
“You’re _free,”_ he shouts. “Go back through the tunnel. Don’t let anyone keep you underground like slaves again.”

A few blinks and nods from those kobolds who were already out of their cages. But nothing else.

Grizzop lets the fire in his bow die out, his shoulders slumping.

One of the kobolds comes forward and nods at him. Says something in Japanese.

Cel comes forward, puts their hand on Grizzop’s shoulder. “He said thanks,” they say, and Grizzop’s shoulders slump even further.

* * *

_They fought._

* * *

Wilde shouts out a phrase and one of the blobs explodes into multicoloured fragments. Carter is still trapped, laughing, and Barnes is desperately hacking at the feet of the colossus which is facing down Grizzop. He looks so tiny. So small but so straight and firm as he aims his bow carefully at a joint in the thing's arm. The arrow flies, the thing screeches, rears back and flings out a shot of power from its ridiculous arms. 

Grizzop - so fast, so reflexive, moves his head too slowly, and Wilde is horrified as he sees fire rip through his ear, the earring in it glowing white hot in the second before it disappears entirely.

The worst thing is, Grizzop doesn't even flinch. He stands firm, takes aim again, fires three arrows in quick succession.

They blaze with fire that glows green at the edges, the light of Grizzop’s devotion, or perhaps his blood. The colossus totters for a moment, groans, then falls.

Wilde can see him shivering, the shake of his arms on the bow that drops to his side, suddenly too heavy. Hears his voice croak, but recognises the words. “Much obliged,” he says. Then collapses.

“ZOLF!” Oscar doesn’t care at the moment, that he’s not objective, that he’s not cold. THIS is why he can’t go into the field, THIS is why he’s not supposed to get his hands dirty. He can send someone to their death, yes, but if he has to be there to watch them… to see them…

The scar on his face throbs and his heart is in his mouth and his fingers are tingling and he has to help Carter who is still doubled over, laughing like a loon, Barnes lying next to him groaning from multiple burns and injuries but Grizzop is down and Oscar can’t…

...he can’t.

He can’t do this again.

Zolf uses his glaive to punt to Grizzop and Zolf hears him mutter angrily to his boots and the soft thud of them hitting the floor. 

“I’ve got him,” he says. “He’s still alive. Help the others.”

Oscar’s voice is thin and reedy but it’s enough, it’s enough to stop the bleeding from Carter’s crushed ankle, it’s enough to pull Carter back from whatever madness the blobs have given him. “Could have fucking used the help of those kobolds,” he says and Barnes tells him to shut the fuck up and just be grateful they’re alive. 

“How’s Speedy?” Carter asks.

“You know he hates it when you call him that…” Barnes and Carter trying desperately for some sense of normalcy, like any of this could ever be normal... Oscar’s fingers are still numb and he hasn’t looked back, not even when Zolf’s soft murmurs turned to loud incantations, not even when the wave of healing magic hits all of them at once, not when he could feel that magic focus down and inwards towards one, single, fragile target.

“He’s…”

“I’m fine,” Grizzop says, and Oscar can feel one tiny, clawed hand on his shoulder. 

Wings flap nearby and Cel alights, monstrous but somehow still concerned. “You okay little buddy?”

Oscar looks up into red eyes that are dancing with more life than he can remember in a long time. The hunt. It’s over. He’s won, and he’s alive and it almost makes up for the ragged edge of his ear, half again as short as it should be, angry red burn scars spreading from its melted tip to the top of his head. He can see glints of gold and silver, and realises the earrings that had adorned it are now spread like silver patterned veins under the darkness of Grizzop’s skin.

It’s beautiful. And horrible.

Oscar feels like he would give half his life to be able to reach up and smooth over that ear, kiss its ruined tip, apologise for what had brought them here.

But Grizzop would never stand for that. So he gets to his feet. Holds out a hand for Carter to do the same.

“We’re not finished yet,” he says, and Zolf gives a firm nod.

* * *

Wilde calls them both into the office. Barnes and Carter are nowhere to be seen. 

“What?”

“The others,” Wilde says, then takes a deep breath. “They’ve come back from Rome.”

Zolf glances at Grizzop, whose fists clench at his sides. “All of them?”

“Curie is sending us Sasha, Azu and Hamid,” he looks at Grizzop, one eyebrow raised. “And Vesseek.”

Zolf knows Grizzop well enough by now, to read his expressions. The shorter ear, the one he poured so much magic into only a few weeks ago, flicks. The smallest movement. The only sign that this news might mean something to him.

“I’ll prep the cell,” Zolf says. 

* * *

It’s too crowded. And Zolf is here and he’s silent and still and Hamid has so many questions, so much to tell him. But every time he tries he’s stonewalled. 

“You know why we have to do this,” Zolf says, and Hamid wants to bash against the bars in frustration, scream at him to tell him what happened, why is Wilde so cold? Where is Grizzop? (They haven’t heard anything from them about him, their friend, and the last time Hamid saw him he was crying and telling them to leave and Vesseek is practically vibrating with anxiety.)

Zolf gives Hamid nothing.

The days drag past. Zolf is replaced by Barnes, then Zolf again, but Hamid can see the two of them are fraying at the edges. Then one night there seems to be no one in the cell with them at all.

Hamid blinks awake in the darkness, expecting to hear the soft turning of pages - both Barnes and Zolf read, nearly all the time they are down here. Instead it’s deadly silent and Hamid can’t see anything but the slightest line of light at the top of the stairs… no… wait.

There’s a pair of boots. Smaller than Zolf’s would be. Good quality leather, tightly laced.

He’s seen those boots before.

He wakes Vesseek. 

* * *

They try. All of them. Sasha asks him if he wants to play cards and Hamid thinks he sees one of the boots move at that. A slight shift. “You’ve probably replaced all your arrows now, haven’t you Grizzop?” but aside from that they can’t even hear him breathe.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound when Vesseek starts to talk. Doesn’t move.

For five hours. 

Vesseek talks, about days in Amsterdam on the banks of the canals, about walking through forests, about hunts, about aspects of Grizzop’s training. Their words are almost hypnotic, and Hamid finds himself thinking of them as a spell, something that will somehow bring him back to them, break through the shell that’s surrounded all of them since they went to Rome. 

But the hours pass, and Vesseek’s voice grows hoarse and then finally softens to nothing, and the door opens and the boots disappear.

Barnes replaces him, and Barnes, despite his stern demeanor, is far, far less frightening.

* * *

“Anything to report?”

Upstairs, in Wilde’s office, Grizzop stands with his hands by his side and gives his report, and the tears don’t stop falling down his face, even though his back is ramrod straight and his voice is clear, and Zolf looks at Wilde, then back at Grizzop.

“He can’t go back down there,” Zolf says, softly, and Grizzop _whirls,_ shoving both hands into Zolf’s chest and throwing him back into the wall with sheer force of will, snarling, teeth exposed, claws digging into his chest.

Wilde stands up, takes two steps to them, puts a hand on Grizzop’s shoulder and Zolf actually thinks he might have been going to kill him, stab him through the chest with his claws or rip out his heart with his teeth, the fury in him is so incandescent, but that hand stops him.

 _“Never_ speak about me like I’m not here,” Grizzop grinds out, then takes a shuddering breath. Zolf’s hands hover over Grizzop’s, still on his chest. He swallows.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“And don’t presume I can’t do my job, Zolf.”

“You don’t…”

“Zolf,” Oscar says, low and quiet. “Leave. Please.”

He leaves. Glances back to see Oscar’s hand smoothing gently over Grizzop’s head. To see the goblin turn his face into Oscar’s chest.

His heart _aches._

* * *

_The full seven days pass. But very little changes._

* * *

“Ey Wilde. What _did_ happen to your face, and how come you ain’t prestidigitatin’ it any more?” Sasha is used to cold looks, even cold looks from Wilde, especially these days, but the glare he gives her is sharp enough to cut through one of Bi Ming’s diamonds, and she doesn’t press any further.

...

“Can you tell me how you lost the ear?” Vesseek asks Grizzop. The rings they gave him are part of him now, melted into his skin. It feels like Vesseek should know instinctively how that happened, but they don’t, and Grizzop’s eyes have never been so unreadable.

“Hunt succeeded,” Grizzop says, and his voice is flat and grim. “It’s not important.”

...

“What really went down with Poseidon, Zolf?”

“Never did get along,” Zolf says. Short. Clipped. 

“Well no, but you…” he indicates Zolf’s hair and beard and Zolf’s mouth turns downwards in distaste. 

“I figured you’d be pleased about it at least,” he says. And Hamid doesn’t know what to say to that, except,

“Why would I be pleased?”

“I don’t need to drown noone no more.”

...

Carter and Barnes are a unit. A impenetrable pair. But Hamid tries any way.

“They’re just like that,” Carter says. “Ever since you died.”

Hamid doesn’t even know how to begin. “But we’re not dead!”

Carter looks at Barnes, who shrugs. “They thought you were.”

...

“It’s not healthy,” Azu says to Cel, their third day out from quarantine, and Cel shakes their head sadly, still tinkering with the brorb, working their way through the reams of paperwork, trying to find a solution.

“You’re telling _me,”_ Cel says. “I mean I want to help them, they helped me, my village is safe and maybe we can fix the world but there’s not a whole lot I can do to fix _people_ , you know? Brains are hard. Even when they’re in one of these…” they tap on the glass of the brorb, and Azu shudders again, looking at the web of blue veins through it.

“Hamid says Zolf was always kind of like this. But Grizzop has changed so much.”

Cel swallows, remembering him standing firm in front of Shoin. Taking the shot of fire that had been meant to kill them all.

“I would have liked to have known him before,” Cel says, and Azu feels tears gathering in the corner of her eyes, nodding. 

* * *

“I’ve seen it before,” Azu says to Hamid, late one night, when they’re curled against each other, warmth and comfort of their touches a barrier against the chill of the people they used to know. “This… this is the aftermath of something awful, Hamid.”

Hamid closes his eyes, squeezes them shut and pulls her closer. He cannot imagine ever doing that. Feelings have power. Feelings are what makes him _him._ Even after Gideon… he’d never wanted to stop feeling forever. But maybe if the bad things were _this bad..._ “How can we help?”

She strokes her fingers through his hair. “I don’t know that we can,” she says.

“We’ll just have to save the world,” Hamid says, trying to force some cheer into his voice. “So they can let themselves feel again.”

Azu sighs. Deep and long. “They might have forgotten how.”

* * *

Oscar finds him in the kitchen, staring at his hand. He’s so still that it takes a few seconds for him to see the blood. 

He doesn’t think. Strides over to him. Takes his hand and murmurs the tune to heal it under his breath. “What happened?”

“I didn’t even feel it,” Zolf says. “Just… watched it go in.” He flexes his fingers as the magic settles. Looks up into Oscar’s eyes.

Oscar can remember thinking once - a lifetime ago - almost certainly at an inappropriate time - that Zolf’s eyes were beautiful. A perfect shade of green, shifting and changing in the light, deeply shadowed but keen and piercing. 

They’re not any more. They’re flat and cold and so very, very familiar.

They’re the same eyes he looks into every morning in the mirror.

The eyes of someone who isn’t there any more.

His fingers curl around Zolf’s wrist, breath frozen in his throat as awful realisation hits him, the bottom falling out of his gut, whatever lie of stability and routine they’ve built around this place, this routine, this… _farce_ of a plan crashing in the calm, measured gaze of a person _Oscar used to know._

 _“Oh gods,”_ he breathes, and reaches up a hand to tangle in Zolf’s hair. “Gods I’m so sorry. I did this to us.”

“What?” Zolf says and Oscar begins to cry. 

It’s ironic, and terrible, that seeing tears on Oscar’s face is what brings life back into Zolf’s. 

...

It’s minutes (or hours) later that Grizzop finds them, forehead to forehead, murmuring apologies, small touches and words laden with more than a year’s pent up grief and guilt. Oscar hears a sharp intake of breath turns to see him standing there, hands on his hips, lips curled in a snarl, ears flat on his head.

“Grizzop…” he starts, but the goblin gives one short, sharp shake of his head.

 _“This_ is why you got that scar.”

* * *

The arrows should be punching through the target, they’re hitting that hard, and Vesseek knows precisely what that means, knows it better than they know the back of their own hand. Grizzop doesn’t hold in emotion well. Or he hadn’t, back when they’d known him.

They don’t know if they know him any more, but they want to try.

“You’ll strain your arms,” they say, and see the tension across Grizzop’s shoulders increase, the ears lie even flatter against his skull.

Another arrow thunks into the target dummy, and straw and dust billow out from it. “Something you need?” Grizzop asks, and Vesseek knows he’s been crying.

“Your company,” Vesseek says, and leans against a tree, just inside Grizzop’s line of sight, crossing their arms. 

There was a game they’d played, back when Grizzop first learned to shoot, when Vesseek would stand close to the target. Teasing him. Because Grizzop wouldn’t shoot if Vesseek was past the danger zone, even though Vesseek knew he was already too good to hit Vesseek by accident. He didn’t trust himself. 

_“What if something happens, what if I’m distracted, what if I hit you…”_

_“You could heal me!”_

_“I don’t know if I’m good enough yet!”_

_“I do.”_

Grizzop draws and fires again. Hitting the target. No hesitation.

Vesseek feels it as though it hit them. _Are you even in there any more, Grizzop?_

“You never used to do this.”

Draw. Shoot.

“Do what?”

“Bottle up like this. Not tell me things.”

“Yeah. Well. You went away. Things changed.”

“They don’t _have_ to be like this.”

Another arrow. Vesseek takes a breath. Steps in front of the target. 

“Get out of the way,” Grizzop says.

“Talk to me first.”

“No. That’s exactly what _they’re_ doing and it’s not going to _help,_ it’s just going to make it worse when they die!”

“You can’t live your life waiting for something bad to happen, Grizzop! It’s the worst kind of waste of time.”

 _That_ pulls him up short. The bow lowers a little. Just a little. “You think I’m wasting time?”

“Yes? Of course you are! You’re all tiptoeing around each other as though the worst has already happened and two years have _gone!”_

“You didn’t have to live them,” Grizzop points out, and Vessek wants to hold him so badly their hands start to shake.

“You were living them for the both of us,” they say. “And _I’m_ not willing to wait _another_ two years for my best friend to come back when he’s _standing right there.”_

The bow lowers a bit more. “I couldn’t get to you,” he says, soft and quiet. “I knew they had you but I… I’m a Paladin. I had to do what was right and I trusted them I knew they’d…” He takes a breath. And then another. The bow droops even more.

“I thought I could do it, just… help Wilde and let them save you but it was like… there was a fist here…” he thumps his chest. “And it was squeezing and it wasn’t going to stop unless I was with you so I tried… I tried so hard. Tried so many things? Wilde even… he helped he got in touch with Curie and they said Eldarion had already left and I never told them to wait for me I didn’t want them to wait, but then I couldn’t find them anywhere and I didn’t know… I didn’t know if you were okay.”

“It’s not your fault,” Vesseek says, softly, stepping forward. The bow doesn’t drop. Grizzop always looks after his equipment, after all. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you,” Grizzop says. His shoulders have started to shake. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Vesseek reaches out and holds him, and that feeling of belonging, being back with the pack, finally, finally comes back.

* * *

_Then perhaps, they can have some time to heal._

* * *

“Oh gods,” Grizzop says, after a long hug, after the apologies have stopped, after Vesseek is sure he can see the Grizzop they used to know shine out from behind those tired, sad eyes. “I was so _awful to Wilde, Vesseek.”_

“Eh,” Vesseek says. “From what everyone says about him, he probably deserves it.”

“I have to say sorry.”

“Right now?”

Grizzop gives them a watery grin. “No time to waste.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Well this was a whole pile of pain and no mistake. Thank you so much to you folks who know what you did. I didn't quite fit ALL the pain in here but that means there's more left overs for tea! But seriously, this fic was a joint effort and wouldn't have happened without you. And I love you.


End file.
